Linking
The Charities Act 2011 (CA 2011) gives the Commission the power to link two or more closely related charities ‘for all or any purposes of this Act’, and their guidance states:
‘In practice, we will usually link charities for both registration and accounting purposes and we will occasionally link charities for registration purposes only.’
Linking charities is intended to reduce the administrative burden on charity trustees and the Commission by allowing the charities to:
- prepare only one set of aggregated accounts
- produce only one trustees’ annual report
- have only one registered charity number, and
- submit only one annual return to the Commission
The Charity Commission will link charities on request as long as they are satisfied that:
- the trustees are fully aware of the benefits
- the limitations of linking, and
- the charities qualify to be linked under the terms of section 12(1)or 12(2) of CA 2011, in that they have the same trustees and/or one or more of the charities is established for any special purposes of, or in connection with another (ie the charities are connected).
Commission Schemes
A Scheme is an authorised document produced by the Commission. A Scheme can amend all or any part of a charity’s governing document.
‘The Charities Act 2011 requires that we must use our resources in the most efficient, effective and economic way, because of this, our policy is that:
- we will only make a Scheme to amend a charity’s governing document where there is no other option available to the trustees to make the required changes
- the scheme will make only those changes that cannot be made in any other way’
If you would like a chat to discuss further, please feel free to contact me for a free 30-minute consultation.
Sophie Campbell
01637 800 306
